Morning Musings
by s0ulm8
Summary: Meandering musings of a micromanaging mind.


Morning Musings

Well, what was he living for, after all? Why was he sticking around this ridiculous planet with it's odd assortment of far-to-easily-figured-out people? What was he gaining by living? What would he gain by dying?

Not the kind of questions most people ask themselves at 5:30 in the morning while staring at a hopelessly outdated clock which 'frugality' refused to allow him to get rid of. Not the kind of questions most people ask themselves at all.

But he wasn't most people, was he? The world had to grant him that. The world, his world, tolerated far too much of his tomfoolery to think him an ordinary mortal. Not that he really did anything death-defying, except save the occasional life, and that didn't happen more than, say, once a month. He had to say he had it good. A fat paycheck for sitting around waiting for dying people and desperate doctors to look him up. What kind of luck was that?

Boredom was his most dire enemy. Ennui in any form was intolerable. If there wasn't a problem he had to create one. Preferably for someone else. The world simply wouldn't turn properly on its axis if it were not so.

He'd finally sent Stacy away for good. Last he heard, Mark was walking upright on two legs again and that meant, presumably, the third leg was in working order as well. He was expecting the 'It's a Boy/Girl' announcement any day now.

He'd managed to participate in the breakup of his best friend's three, count them, three marriages. A public service, that. They would have crumbled anyway, but probably not before the creation of offspring, which was just too much of a complication. How Wilson managed to dodge that bullet rested solely on the shoulders of our protagonist.

He'd shaken off his first set of fellows and was dreading the interviews for the next batch. Raising children was a btch. No wonder he never married. Come to think of it, which he rarely did, he never married because the thought of bringing more freaks like himself into the world was insufferable. The nature vs. nurture debate was personified in him. He considered himself a natural-born freak as well as a controlled experiment in how to alienate a child without really trying. He understood why his father disliked him, what he could never quite work out was why his mother refused to have another child. It was the one subject he could not analyze, would not examine, dared not scrutinize. Any other issue on the planet was fair game, however. And he delighted in doing his best to tear them to shreds.

Take his leg, for example. Most who know him would tell you he was an insufferably manipulative bastard before he lost the better part of his thigh muscle. In fact, that was one of the reasons he went undiagnosed until it was too late. Now, however, the world had to admit he had a plausible excuse for being an insufferably manipulative bastard. Point for him.

The tearing to shreds part comes when examining precisely why he lost this precious tissue. The 'ifs' alone boggle the mind.

If he hadn't been such a pain in the a$$, self-important, ridiculing dipwad, at least one of the doctors he saw might have taken the time to perform a Doppler study or an angiogram right away. 'But, hell, it's House, who gives a flying rat's butt? He's going to tell me what to do and won't take any of my suggestions anyway!'

If he hadn't given Stacy his Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare, meaning he trusted her to do what he wanted done and not do what he didn't want done. That was a trust issue that simply wouldn't die. It proved to him irrevocably that no one could be trusted, not even the woman he loved. More importantly, it proved she couldn't trust him. And that was the bigger issue as far as he was concerned.

If Cuddy hadn't suggested that disastrous 'middle ground' to a woman who was obviously overcome by emotion, her wonderfully rational mind muddied by damnable sentiment.

If he had recognized the initial pain for what it was, rather than allowing it to prevail over his own lucid thought process. His own penchant for differential diagnoses had failed him. He'd failed himself. Miserably.

So, here he was at 5:45 in the morning, staring at a near useless appendage, trying hard not to wish things had been different. Here's where he realizes, if only for a split second, that he is just like everybody else.

Everybody wishes things were different.

Everybody lies.

Especially to themselves.


End file.
